Topics on General and Formal Ontology
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Topics on General and Formal Ontology Paolo Valore Editor ESTRATTO DAL VOLUME Polimetrica INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHER Paolo Valore (ed.), Topics on General and Formal Ontology, 67-77 ©2006 Polimetrica International Scientific Publisher Monza/Italy Book series: Open Access Publications (http://www.polimetrica.com) ISBN 978-88-7699-029-8 Electronic Edition ISBN 978-88-7699-028-1 Printed Edition 2006 Polimetrica ® S.a.s. Corso Milano, 26 20052 Monza - Milan - Italy Phone ++39/0392301829 Web site: www.polimetrica.com The electronic edition of this book is not sold and is made available in free access. Every contribution is published according to the terms of “Polimetrica License B”. “Polimetrica License B” gives anyone the possibility to distribute the contents of the work, provided that the authors of the work and the publisher are always recognised and mentioned. It does not allow use of the contents of the work for commercial purposes or for profit. 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Sincerely, Editorial Staff Polimetrica Publisher 67 Some Ontological Remarks on the Maxim of Identification of Indiscernibles Paolo Valore Abstract. In Körner 1970, a pluralization of categorial frameworks is put forward. This project can be interpreted as a transcendentalism relativized in respect of several systems of reference. Here I attempt to apply this idea to what may be the most fundamental category, that of identity and unitariness, employing to this end the maxim discussed in Quine 1950. In §§ 1-2, I introduce the notion of “object” (or “entity”) through the (intuitively more immediate) example of material objects, point to the problematical nature of this notion with reference to the principle of identity, and state the aim of my contribution, which is to make this problematical aspect (at least partially) meaningless by a pragmatic move, involving the constitution of identity (identification). In § 3, I refer explicitly to the Kantian perspective and introduce some notions that are useful for what I propose to do here. In §§ 4-5, I express some doubts with regard to essence and necessity and these doubts lead to the identification solution in discourse contexts (§ 6). In § 7, I draw on two examples used in Quine 1950: sociology and propositional logic. In § 8, I present a general consequence (ontological pluralism) and in §§ 9-11 more specific consequences in relation to token-type bifurcation (§ 9), the need for a sortal expression for statements of identity (§ 10), and nominalism (§ 11). The argument used in § 11, which is simply a collateral application of the consequence presented in § 8, draws on some remarks developed more fully in Valore 2006. 1. Initial problems Objects can be of many different kinds. Among the least problematical we are perhaps prepared to admit first of all material objects (in the broad sense of not necessarily being identified with physical objects). Let us consider then, for the sake of simplicity, the case of material objects like books and bookshops. One of the criteria we usually rely on is the principle of unitariness, according to which a 68 Paolo Valore (material) object is something essentially unitary (even if not necessarily coherent), distinct – as it were, conceptually carved out – from the background. It is sufficiently clear, at least intuitively, that a book is a unitary object distinct from the bookshop in which it is found and from the bookmark inside it. However, when we ask why we make this assumption, difficulties may arise. Although some of these later turn out to be only apparent (or apparent in their traditional formulation), the fact remains that they force us to account for our idea of identity: in what sense is an object identical to itself and different from the others? The difficulties with material objects can be of (at least) two kinds, are widely reported in philosophical literature, and can easily be generalized to objects in general. A first kind of difficulty lies at the diachronic level. What we have here is a set of problems that are well exemplified by the traditional argument regarding identity in change: how is it possible to identify the same object despite change in its properties? Do we have to postulate a substance as the substratum for identity? A second kind of difficulty lies at the synchronic level; the problems here are connected, for example, with the difficulties encountered in tracing the degree of unitariness of a material object. Is a book a unitary object? What about the cover or the glue that holds the pages together? And can we speak of a single object if we move from the descriptive level that recognizes a macroscopic object to the level that traces innumerable subatomic particles? It is evident that the intuitive instruments to which we have recourse in common sense contexts are insufficient. Such instruments are, for example, the idea that a material object is something coherent and continuous or that the object is unitary because basically homogeneous. However, it is easy to come up with counterexamples to both these solutions (salt is found in part in my kitchen and in part in the Ocean, and a single table can be made out of many different materials). Objects of a different kind from material objects, providing they are allowed into our “inventory of the world”, suffer of course from additional problems, which it is not worth going into detail here. Suffice it to recall the attempts made throughout the history of philosophy to (in some way) reduce non-material objects (like, for example, abstract entities) to material objects or even physical objects in a narrow sense to the ordinary objects of common sense. This is true of, among others, Toulmin 1953, who as a criterion for the existence of problematic entities, like a neutrino or magnetic field, suggests «cloud-chamber pictures of a Į-ray tracks, electron microscope photographs or, as a second-best, audible clicks from a Geiger counter», arguing that this would be «sufficiently like being shown a live dodo on a lawn» (p. 136). Such attempts reveal the misconception that material objects are easier to justify philosophically. But this is obviously not so; or, to be more exact, the identity principle for material objects themselves is waiting to be justified from a philosophical standpoint. And as long as that does not occur, “why the table is the object it is” is an unresolved question on a par with “what kind of object is ¥9”. Paolo Valore (ed.) Topics on General and Formal Ontology ©2006 Polimetrica International Scientific Publisher Monza/Italy Some Ontological Remarks on the Maxim of Identification of Indiscernibles 69 2. Aim of this paper The above-mentioned difficulties will not be gone into any further. What this paper proposes instead is to consider the principle of identity of an object and not only a material one. This principle is understood as the principle of identification of indiscernibles. It starts from the maxim put forward in Quine 1950, although I develop it along different lines from what he intended. In particular, I propose to reject the moderation in applying the maxim recommended in Quine 1960 (p. 230). The intention behind choosing the term “identification” is to underline the logical priority of the act of constituting identity, whose outcome is a unitary object (and not the reverse). Clearly, “identification” is not here synonymous with “individuation”, especially if, by individuation, one means an exclusively epistemic principle (one that would allow us to trace individuals, things and events on the basis of certain criteria). What is required is not an answer to the question: “How can we know if a is identical to b?” or “How can we know if the object considered at a moment t1 is identical to the object considered at a moment t2?”. Identification shares with identity an ontological characterization. I hope to succeed below in elucidating in what sense the identification of indiscernibles within contexts is able to combine the ontological level of identity with the level of the epistemic criteria for identity (which at most can be informative) and with the level of individuation. Naturally, there is no intention here to resolve all the difficulties of both a diachronic and synchronic kind referred to above. Rather, the aim is to point out that these difficulties are often tied to the nostalgia for a readymade object, in itself, of which we may have no need. A further consequence is the pluralization of the absolute principle of identity into a principle of identity in contexts of discourse. Furthermore, I also intend to deny that the privilege of material objects and the attempts to reduce other kinds of entities to material objects (or, at a more sophisticated level, of non-physical entities to physical objects) have any meaning or that they are of any use from a metaphysical standpoint. 3. Thing and representation In section 1, I referred to the complications in respect of the identity of an object and its characterization as a unitary object.